Should Your Default Response be Authoritarian Violence?

If there is any situation in which you want the default to be authoritarian violence, then you’re a statist. For example, if you think it’s okay for agents of the state to forcibly disarm someone, unless and until that individual persuades the political masters that he has (or deserves) their legislative permission to be armed, then you’re a freaking statist.

Likewise, if your position is that violence should be used to stop people from crossing the arbitrary lines known as national “borders,” unless and until an individual can persuade the political masters that he has (or deserves) their legislative permission to cross, then you’re a freaking statist.

While down in Mexico, I lost my dang driver’s license. Luckily, I did not lose my passport. Had I lost my passport, how many scared little “closed border” statists would have condoned force being used to keep me out of “Murica,” unless and until I could prove U.S. citizenship to the political masters? Whether you call it “immigration policy,” or “vetting,” or any other vague euphemism, when you condone violence-by-default, you are condoning it against me, and against yourself. And that makes you not only a statist, but an idiot, since you are advocating your own subjugation (as well as everyone else’s).

Here’s hoping that every advocate of “closed borders” loses his passport while out of the country, and comes face to face with the bullshit authoritarian violence he condones.

Larken Rose is an anarchist author best known for challenging the IRS to answer questions about the federal tax liability of citizens, and being put in prison with no questions answered. He is the author of The Most Dangerous Superstition.